Characterizing Creativity in Data Visualization: Reflections and Future Directions

[2504.02204] Characterizing Creativity in Data Visualization: Reflections and Future Directions Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Search arXiv Press Enter to search · Advanced search Computer Science > Human-Computer Interaction arXiv:2504.02204 (cs) [Submitted on 3 Apr 2025 ( v1 ), last revised 11 Apr 2026 (this version, v3)] Title: Characterizing Creativity in Data Visualization: Reflections and Future Directions Authors: Tianwei Ma , Zinat Ara , Safwat Ali Khan , Fanny Chevalier , Niklas Elmqvist , Naimul Hoque View a PDF of the paper titled Characterizing Creativity in Data Visualization: Reflections and Future Directions, by Tianwei Ma and 5 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Characterizing creativity in visualization design can lead to the design of more expressive representations and visualization authoring tools that prioritize human creativity. In this paper, we examine how creativity manifests itself in visualization design processes through two complementary studies. First, a systematic review of 63 papers yields a design space spanning three themes: creative design frameworks that focus on developing design processes by incorporating divergent and convergent thinking activities, creative visual representations that focus on developing unorthodox visualizations, and visualization-enabled creativity support tools that focus on supporting a creative task (e.g., writing) with visualization. Second, we conducted qualitative interviews with 11 visualization practitioners and researchers to understand practical challenges and contrast those with current academic framing through our design space. The interview findings indicate that artifacts or final products (unorthodox visualizations) are often disproportionately considered as the primary indicator of creativity, whereas the design process remains undervalued in practical and organizational contexts. We also found that ideation is a universal bottleneck, and organizational constraints are often the primary barrier to creative work. We discuss implications for rethinking the relationship between our design space categories, addressing organizational barriers, and designing future frameworks, tools, and evaluation methods that better support creativity in the age of AI-assisted visualization. The full list of coded papers is available here: this https URL . Subjects: Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) Cite as: arXiv:2504.02204 [cs.HC] (or arXiv:2504.02204v3 [cs.HC] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2504.02204 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Naimul Hoque [ view email ] [v1] Thu, 3 Apr 2025 01:31:09 UTC (3,120 KB) [v2] Sat, 27 Sep 2025 03:51:13 UTC (6,333 KB) [v3] Sat, 11 Apr 2026 23:22:43 UTC (5,513 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Characterizing Creativity in Data Visualization: Reflections and Future Directions, by Tianwei Ma and 5 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: cs.HC < prev | next > new | recent | 2025-04 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... 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